Alibaba Cloud Network Load Balancer (NLB) Monitoring Integration
Site24x7 offers comprehensive out-of-the-box monitoring for Network Load Balancers (NLB) deployed in your Alibaba Cloud environment. You can gain real-time visibility into connection usage, traffic throughput, dropped packets, and backend health to maintain optimal load distribution and application reliability. Once your Alibaba Cloud account is integrated with Site24x7, all associated Network Load Balancers are auto-discovered and continuously monitored.
Use cases
- Connection management: Monitor active, inactive, and dropped connections to detect abnormal connection behaviors.
- Traffic flow insights: Track inbound and outbound traffic at both Virtual IP and instance levels to optimize bandwidth usage.
- Packet analysis: Monitor packet reception, transmission, and drops to identify potential networking issues.
- Load distribution efficiency: Track per-instance and VIP-level traffic to ensure balanced resource usage.
- Health monitoring: Measure listener healthy server count to verify availability of backend servers.
Setup and configuration
- Log in to your Site24x7 account and navigate to Cloud > Alibaba Cloud > Add Monitor.
- In the Edit Alibaba Cloud Monitor page, select Network Load Balancer from the Service Types list.
- Once added, go to Cloud > Alibaba > Network Load Balancer to view dashboards and performance metrics.
Supported metrics
Connection Metrics
| Metric name | Description | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum Connections | The maximum number of concurrent connections handled. | Count |
| Active Connections | The number of currently active connections. | Count |
| Inactive Connections | The number of inactive connections. | Count |
| New Connections | The number of new connections established. | Count |
| Dropped Connections | The number of connections dropped. | Count |
| Instance New Connections | The number of new connections per instance. | Count |
| Instance Active Connections | The number of active connections per instance. | Count |
| Instance Inactive Connections | The number of inactive connections per instance. | Count |
| Instance Maximum Connections | The maximum number of concurrent connections per instance. | Count |
| Instance Dropped Connections | The number of dropped connections per instance. | Count |
| VIP Active Connections | The number of active connections at the Virtual IP. | Count |
| VIP Inactive Connections | The number of inactive connections at the Virtual IP. | Count |
| VIP Maximum Connections | The maximum number of concurrent connections at the VIP level. | Count |
| VIP New Connections | The number of new connections established via the VIP. | Count |
| VIP Dropped Connections | The number of dropped connections at the VIP level. | Count |
Traffic Metrics
| Metric name | Description | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Instance Traffic Received | The rate of inbound traffic received per instance. | Bytes/second |
| Instance Traffic Transmitted | The rate of outbound traffic transmitted per instance. | Bytes/second |
| VIP Traffic Received | The rate of inbound traffic received at the VIP level. | Bytes/second |
| VIP Traffic Transmitted | The rate of outbound traffic transmitted at the VIP level. | Bytes/second |
| VIP Dropped Transmitted Traffic | The volume of dropped outbound traffic at the VIP level. | Bytes/second |
| VIP Dropped Received Traffic | The volume of dropped inbound traffic at the VIP level. | Bytes/second |
| Instance Dropped Transmitted Traffic | The volume of dropped outbound traffic at the instance level. | Bytes/second |
| Instance Dropped Received Traffic | The volume of dropped inbound traffic at the instance level. | Bytes/second |
Packet Metrics
| Metric name | Description | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Instance Packets Received | The number of packets received per instance. | Packets/second |
| Instance Packets Transmitted | The number of packets transmitted per instance. | Packets/second |
| VIP Dropped Packets Received | The number of dropped inbound packets at the VIP level. | Packets/second |
| VIP Dropped Packets Transmitted | The number of dropped outbound packets at the VIP level. | Packets/second |
| Instance Dropped Packets Received | The number of dropped inbound packets at the instance level. | Packets/second |
| Instance Dropped Packets Transmitted | The number of dropped outbound packets at the instance level. | Packets/second |
Health Metrics
| Metric name | Description | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Listener Healthy Servers | The number of healthy backend servers for the listener. | Count |
Threshold configuration
- Go to Admin > Configuration Profiles > Threshold and Availability.
- Create or edit a threshold profile for Network Load Balancer.
- Assign the profile to the respective monitors to trigger alerts.
IT automation
Site24x7's IT Automation tools help with automatically resolving performance degradation issues. When a breach occurs, the alarm engine continuously examines the system events for which thresholds have been defined and performs the mapped automation.
- Go to Admin > IT Automation Templates.
- Create a new automation rule.
- Map the rule to the monitor for proactive resolution.
How to configure IT Automation for a monitor
Configuration rules
With Site24x7's Configuration Rules, you can set parameters like Threshold Profile, Notification Profile, Tags, and Monitor Group for multiple monitors and automate the configuration settings of your monitoring resources. Automatically assign these settings when new Network Load Balancer monitors are added.
How to add a Configuration Rule